Auger Pyrolysis Reactor

Features and Capabilities

The dried biomass is first added to the hopper from where it is fed with a volumetric feeder into the auger reactor at a feeding rate between 1 to 40 g/min. The auger is inside a stainless-steel tube with 58.5 cm length and 10 cm diameter heated by a furnace.

The biomass is pushed through the hot zone of the reactor with an auger screw driven by a 1 hp variable speed motor. Nitrogen is typically used as the carrier gas. The speed of the Auger can be easily varied. The temperature on the external wall is recorded as well as the temperature of the biomass bed at the exit of the heating zone and at the entrance into the collection pot.

The pyrolysis vapors resulting are condensed in three condensation units. The pressure inside the reactor is typically kept close to atmospheric pressure (under a very slight vacuum -2 mm H2O) by drawing the pyrolytic vapors and the carrier gas through the condensers with a vacuum pump. The yield of liquid is typically determined by weighing the traps, the vacuum pump and the liquid collected in condensers. The non-condensable gases are calculated by difference.